Friday, April 30, 2010

i made these pieces last summer at the society for contemporary craft while i was teaching a workshop called alternative embellishment. the students taking this workshop were particularly enthusiastic, so the facility gave us an extra hour or so each day to work in the studio after class. during this down time, i sewed these pieces using materials on my table and around the studio as well as started and finished them during that extra hour. it was fun and freeing to work with limited materials and to make something within a limited amount of time. those limitations curbed my inclination to think too much and just enabled me to do and make. these may not be masterpieces by any stretch, but they've informed my encaustic work immensely as well as sparked a renewed interest for me to begin making quilt or quilt-like pieces again. i'm also proud to announce that the second piece shown here was accepted into the juried show 'collective thread' to be held at the university of central missouri gallery of art & design in may and june. the acceptance into this show has encouraged me to move on with this work, so i've created three more of these pieces within the past week. stay tuned for some images coming soon....

When I am in nature I experience the world through all of my senses in a dynamic way, but at the same time I am framing what I see through the cultural expectations I have absorbed through representational systems such as landscape painting, wildlife documentary, and travel guides. It is very difficult, then, to have a true, non-mediated experience of nature even though I may long for it. My work explores the contradictions between the projection of idealized, picturesque views of landscape and my desire to have an authentic experience in nature.

My recent compositions contain a mixture of landscape images painted on paper, which have been shaped into three-dimensional sculptures that protrude from the wall. The battered and wrinkled sheets of paper that are the foundation of these works carry a blend of imagery containing picturesque landscapes drawn from memory, photo transfers based on nature photography, abstract areas of raw paint, and actual artifacts from the land such as pine needles and bark. By employing multiple representational modes, I create tension between the cultural codes traditionally used to represent landscape. For example, pools of thick, raw, liquid paint at once expose the illusion of representational systems and mimic the properties of the rivers and streams they are used to signify. Similarly, the exaggerated folds of the thick watercolor paper transform the flat, framed image of the traditional landscape into a dimensional topography that cannot be completely owned from one vantage point. The three-dimensional forms of these new terrains -- painted on both sides and containing hidden vignettes -- encourage the kind ofexploration one might find in nature rather than a traditional picture.

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

i saw this work at the pittsburgh center for the arts last week when i attended the opening for fiberart international (see my other blog for the posts on this show). anyway, i was attracted to this work for it's vibrant color and organic movement, but i was very intrigued when i realized that they weren't paintings, but pigment prints-the color is just brilliant-i think i'll have to get me one of these printers! and the work is interesting, too. i found myself staring at these pieces to figure out what these forms actually were and the images on her site are nice and large so you can stare at them, too! see more here.

...The robot’s setting is that of a tilted stage or shadow box and in this environment the robot is a translator of events, an alter ego, a doppelganger. The robot can be an observer, a soothsayer, a malcontent or a destructor. The viewer is invited into the picture plane to see the modality of the robot’s disposition as it reflects human nature.......During the past year, I have focussed on inventing the robot’s world, using plant and cellular forms that are stranger than life and pregnant with meaning. These works consist of intricate collaged embroideries, egg tempera paintings on wood panels, and gouache paintings on paper. The robot’s environment of oversized botany is steeped in a visceral, atavistic aura. The natural and pseudo mechanized images represent the dichotomy between issues of fatalism and hopefulness.

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

i'm probably this artist's biggest fan (although that does sound rather creepy), but he has such an interesting range of work, sometimes i'll just sit and stare in order to analyze his use of color, paint and form...it blows me away how he is able to precariously, yet skillfully, walk the line between chaos and control and keep us hanging there. i'm very into his older paintings, but these newer more simpler signage paintings are growing on me...see more here.

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

I shoot photographs, the way I write, with the intention of moving people. It makes me feel less alone. It is my great escape from the cruelty of the world. There is enough ugliness and pain in life- I do not have to turn over rocks. I seek beauty and pathos and humor. It is "Beauty" that drives me and comforts me, even if it is a "Strange Beauty".

important words

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